Moments of surprise, whimsy and unconventional truth burst from the pages of Slake: Los Angeles, the new quarterly journal whose editors have essentially flipped the bird at the faster-quicker-shorter imperatives that are supposed to define 21st century media.

Proving they are determinedly retro, founders Joe Donnelly and Laurie Ochoa have only begun to build a website. But they highly buffed an inaugural edition of 232 thick, glossy pages -- filled with essays, poetry, photography, short fiction, reported stories and almost no advertising. They'd like to do the same thing at least four times a year, as long as money holds out. It's anybody's guess how long that might be.

Those of us who live in Southern California enjoy an excess of sunshine, and suffer from a dearth of ambitious local journalism. Were there only The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Silver Lake Rail, The Pacific, and The Californian to compete with my favorite East Coast publications, I'd stop complaining about the stranglehold the Acela corridor has on American media, double my subscriptions, and spend blissful days reading on local beaches, especially during bad surf.

In other words, I am thrilled at the news that Slake has launched, even if its founding editors, LA Weekly alums Laurie Ochoa and Joe Donnelly, do lack a business plan and a completed Web site. I'll have more to say about this new venture sometime, somewhere -- an assessment that will be more thoughtfully critical than excited, and more informed, since I'm still working my way through the first issue, and eagerly anticipating the release of the second issue sometime later this autumn.

However, having read some Slake pieces -- what an impressive lineup of writers -- and after conversing with its editors over lunch, I can vouch that their ambitions for this project are enormous, that they aren't the sorts to compromise on quality or intellectual integrity, and that I'm absolutely rooting for their new project to endure, mature, and succeed wildly. If you're in Los Angeles, here's a list of bookstores where you can buy a copy.

So few new media enterprises prioritize quality and respect for the readership.

About the Author

Conor Friedersdorf is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he focuses on politics and national affairs. He lives in Venice, California, and is the founding editor of The Best of Journalism, a newsletter devoted to exceptional nonfiction.

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Writing used to be a solitary profession. How did it become so interminably social?

Whether we’re behind the podium or awaiting our turn, numbing our bottoms on the chill of metal foldout chairs or trying to work some life into our terror-stricken tongues, we introverts feel the pain of the public performance. This is because there are requirements to being a writer. Other than being a writer, I mean. Firstly, there’s the need to become part of the writing “community”, which compels every writer who craves self respect and success to attend community events, help to organize them, buzz over them, and—despite blitzed nerves and staggering bowels—present and perform at them. We get through it. We bully ourselves into it. We dose ourselves with beta blockers. We drink. We become our own worst enemies for a night of validation and participation.

Even when a dentist kills an adored lion, and everyone is furious, there’s loftier righteousness to be had.

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But Cecil fatigue is only going to get worse. On Friday morning, Zimbabwe’s environment minister, Oppah Muchinguri, called for the extradition of the man who killed him, the Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. Muchinguri would like Palmer to be “held accountable for his illegal action”—paying a reported $50,000 to kill Cecil with an arrow after luring him away from protected land. And she’s far from alone in demanding accountability. This week, the Internet has served as a bastion of judgment and vigilante justice—just like usual, except that this was a perfect storm directed at a single person. It might be called an outrage singularity.

Forget credit hours—in a quest to cut costs, universities are simply asking students to prove their mastery of a subject.

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Instead, Kippnick makes her way through different subject matters on the way to a bachelor’s in accounting. When she feels she’s mastered a certain subject, she takes a test at home, where a proctor watches her from afar by monitoring her computer and watching her over a video feed. If she proves she’s competent—by getting the equivalent of a B—she passes and moves on to the next subject.

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During the multi-country press tour for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, not even Jon Stewart has dared ask Tom Cruise about Scientology.

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The new version of Apple’s signature media software is a mess. What are people with large MP3 libraries to do?

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Some say the so-called sharing economy has gotten away from its central premise—sharing.

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The residents had been inspired by similar tool-lending libraries across the country—in Columbus, Ohio; in Seattle, Washington; in Portland, Oregon. The ethos made sense to the Mainers. “We all have day jobs working to make a more sustainable world,” says Hazel Onsrud, one of the Maine Tool Library’s founders, who works in renewable energy. “I do not want to buy all of that stuff.”

Jim Gilmore joins the race, and the Republican field jockeys for spots in the August 6 debate in Cleveland.

After decades as the butt of countless jokes, it’s Cleveland’s turn to laugh: Seldom have so many powerful people been so desperate to get to the Forest City. There’s one week until the Republican Party’s first primary debate of the cycle on August 6, and now there’s a mad dash to get into the top 10 and qualify for the main event.

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